Survivor: Palau – Why Jeff Lost

Yes, I know – some of you are probably wondering why I bother with these columns during weeks like these. After all, Jeff asked his tribe to vote him out, just one step short of actually quitting. But the fact is that you clicked onto this article, so you must be somewhat interested in what we can find out! Besides, the vote against Jeff was no slam-dunk. So let’s find out what Jeff did right, what he did wrong, and why Jeff lost.

Even in times like these, the best way to answer these questions is by looking back at What Palau Survivors Should Have Learned. While there is not a specific entry for an injury, there are plenty of other things to discuss.

The first rule is to scheme and plot. Jeff did a fair job of this at the end, convincing almost everybody to vote the way he wanted them to. Unfortunately, that meant voting against him!

But seriously, up until that time Jeff had been on the winning side of both votes. He was part of the anti-Jolanda bloc and then helped turn the tide against Ashlee and for his girlfriend Kim (though Ashlee asking to be voted off certainly helped!). However, his political strategy was not a smart one. He paired up quickly with Kim in an obvious way. Then he defended it and claimed it wasn’t an alliance, just cuddling for warmth. Yeah, everybody bought that one.

If Jeff had stayed in the game, his cuddle-buddy would have been gone and he would not have been a happy camper. That much was obvious from his reaction last week. He could have ended up on the outs anyway.

But that didn’t happen, because Jeff asked to be given the boot. Considering that this article looks at what people do wrong, I’d say that is a pretty big one, at least as far as strategy is concerned!

However, we can certainly say Jeff didn’t scheme and plot too much, so the second rule was not a factor.

The third rule was to pretend to be nice. Jeff seemed to get along with everybody pretty well, though he did have that bit of an upset when he found out people were targeting Kim. Still, how can you say a guy who voluntarily leaves for the betterment of his team was anything but nice?

Fourth is to not let emotions control you. Jeff was in an interesting position. When he first turned his ankle, he thought maybe keeping it elevated during the night would fix the problem. It didn’t. After one challenge failure and a day of walking on it, Jeff decided that his ankle would not recover for weeks. So we are forced to wonder: was that experience or emotion talking?

An injury like that is certainly no fun. He said that each time he took a step, he had to grit his teeth and wanted to cry. But could he have played through the pain? We saw him laughing and having fun with Kim as he chopped coconuts, so it wasn’t all pain. But Survivor is a game of physical challenge, and at this stage in the game there was no way Jeff was going to avoid challenges in which he had to run, swim, jump, and who knows what else. Plus, since their tribe has lost three times, he could not hope to sit out the tough ones.

Jeff was in the best position to know his own body. He thought it would take weeks to recover, and we cannot really rebut that claim. Did emotion come into his decision? Perhaps, but Jeff seemed to be focusing on the logic of the situation more than anything.

The fifth rule says not to be too much of a threat. With his injury, it might at first glance seem that Jeff didn’t have anything to worry about on that front. However, Jeff was a threat of another type – a threat to make Ulong lose challenges. Kim might be almost a complete waste in challenges, but at least she can take up a spot and run or jump. Jeff would not have been able to do even that.

Sixth is to work hard and not be lazy. Here is where we really address the reason that the vote against Jeff was not unanimous. Two people on the tribe felt so strongly that Kim is a lazy good-for-nothing that they voted against her rather than a man so injured that he was asking to be sent home! This does not bode well for Kim, and I have a feeling I’ll be writing about “Why Kim Lost” in short order unless she really pours it on (if she even has anything to pour).

On the flipside, Jeff was a hard enough worker that Bobby Jon and James felt he would be more useful to the tribe in his hobbled condition than Kim is in her fully healthy one! Heck, I’m sure Jeff could cheer on Bobby Jon as he did the hard work at least as well as Kim did. So this was not an issue in Jeff getting voted off, though it almost kept him on despite his own wishes.

The seventh rule of being flexible takes on a whole new meaning with Jeff. Perhaps if his ankle was more flexible, this wouldn’t have happened! Okay, okay, sorry. Truth is, this rule had nothing to do with anything as far as Jeff was concerned.

So, did Ulong do the right thing in voting off Jeff? My first thought was no, they should have kept him around and gotten rid of Kim. However, that was more of a personal feeling than a proper strategic one. The fact is that Ulong needed to get rid of the weakest member. At this point, that was Jeff. We’ve already discussed his inability to really participate in pretty much any challenge going forward. Kim might be piss-poor in the challenges, but at least she can stand up straight (if it isn’t too much trouble for her). At least there is a chance her tribemates could convince her to get water or gather coconuts or firewood. While it would have been amusing to see Kim go, I do think Ulong made the right decision for the future of their tribe.

In the end, Jeff’s ouster was determined by an errant coconut (what was a coconut doing on the beach anyway? I wonder whose job it was to clean up the camp area…). I think he might have stuck around another week if he had not flat-out told the tribe to vote for him, but even then we saw that at least Angie was planning to go against him. The political and social aspects of the game are the most important, but players also need to be able to survive. When Mike fell into the fire way back in the second Survivor season (which, incidentally, is now available for pre-order on DVD – check the right column or the end of this article for the link), he was severely injured and unable to continue. Jeff’s injury was definitely less severe, but still spelled the end of his time on Survivor.

Jeff could have tried to finagle a way to stick around. Perhaps we might even say he should have tried to do it. After all, Survivor is about being the last person standing – it is not a team game even though Jeff was a team player. But whether he went down trying to hold on or simply recognized it was time to go, I think Jeff saw that his time in the game was over. That is why Jeff lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other Survivor: Palau Episode 3 articles:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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